I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.
Patton OswaltI'm glad that that era of stand-up is over, because I think it adversely affected a lot of people who could have been really, really great comedians. Because they unconsciously or subconsciously stifled their wild impulses, and were thinking about the five clean minutes for The Tonight Show, or the 20-minute sitcom pitch as a stand-up act.
Patton OswaltI know how my body operates differently from what it did when it was 30 and when it was 20. As unhealthy as I am, I'm weirdly aware of exactly how my body functions.
Patton OswaltI have a lot of friends who were stand-ups, and they just stopped after a while, because they didn't like that battle, or they just couldn't do it. And then they would get on a sitcom and get visible and get back into it, because the audience was just way easier on them. But they lost those crucial years of learning to turn any audience into your audience.
Patton OswaltGrowing up there are always those kids who are only happy when they are making someone else upset. That is unfortunately just how some people are. And their parents were fine. Some people are just born with bad wiring.
Patton OswaltWhat I'm realizing as I get older is that a movie's mainstream success is just as unpredictable as a movie's cult success. Plenty of movies that are truly odd and deserve cults, don't have cults. It's just as much of a crapshoot to be a cult hit as it is to be a mainstream success. Isn't that weird?
Patton Oswalt